GREYWALKER (GREYWALKER, BOOK 1) REVIEW

AUTHOR: Kat Richardson

PUBLISHED: 2006

PAPERBACK: 352 Pages

SUMMARY: Harper Blaine was your average small-time P.I. until a two-bit perp's savage assault left her dead for two minutes. When she comes to the hospital, she sees things that can only be described as weird-shapes emerging from a foggy grey mist, snarling teeth, creatures roaring.

But Harper's not crazy. Her "death" has made her a Greywalker- able to move between the human world and the mysterious cross-over zone where things that go bump in the night exist. And her new gift is about to drag her into that strange new realm-whether she likes it or not.

MY THOUGHTS :

NON-SPOILER:-

So, where to start. Well, I’ve never read a book quite like this before, not exactly, on the other hand, there are about a billion books with a female protagonist almost like this, I haven’t gotten to the second book yet but this seems like, well if not the best then a promising start to an interesting series. When I first started reading it, it felt quite dull, to be honest at least for the first 100 pages, things were happening but felt like it was lacking something, something amazing enough to hook you in, and that happened after I got through the first 100 pages, that’s when I felt like the story actually sped up and became more spread out with more characters becoming intricately involved in the plot, making it more interesting. Although the main character is supposed to be a PI and the book concentrates on the investigative sides of things for a bulk of the story it certainly didn’t feel like it with the supernatural elements involved and although the investigative side of the story wasn’t poorly written or uninteresting or anything it just didn’t feel crucial enough to me. Now about the Grey, the Grey is the most convoluted part of the whole story and the basis for the whole story, and I get that not everything is easy to explain or understand in this world so the idea of the Grey being so convoluted is not so far off, but seeing that it’s supposed to be the basis of this whole story maybe it should have been easier to understand. I thought getting further into the story that the idea of the Grey would become a little clearer to me but I had more questions about it than answers by the end of it all. I hope this situation is remedied as the series progresses.

SPOILER:-

It’s like a contemporary fantasy meets urban noir with a female PI and an abundance of supernatural ingredients, just as the book starts our protagonist is getting beaten to death by a guy. Why is the guy beating her up? Well because people are crazy and cannot be trusted, and he technically manages to kill her because she dies for about 2 minutes according to her doctor before entering the realm of the living again, and then she starts to see a blowing grey mist that almost seems to be alive and people who aren’t solid. Her doctor who it seems kinda believes in the occult points her to a friend of his who could help and she finds Mara Danziger and her husband, Mara claims to be a witch, to be honest, she uses a lot of magic throughout the book but I still didn't get how a Witch manipulates magic and what are the actual limitations or how powerful she is, the author took a fair amount of time establishing the manipulation of the grey to weave into magic but the idea of it is so convoluted that I didn’t completely get it. Maybe it’s the same for everyone who read the book or maybe it’s just me, anyway the magic gets much cooler by the end of the book.

So Mara explains to the confused and disbelieving Harper that the out of phase people she's been seeing are actually ghosts and the Grey mist is a part of the paranormal dimension occupied by all kind of nasty supernatural creatures such as ghosts, vampires, and other monsters that we are yet to see and the Mist is what seeps in from the other side onto the land of the living and that her momentary death may have turned her into a Greywalker, who can not only perceive the Grey but manipulate it to a certain extent and enter it. Over the course of the story, Harper meets a few almost friendly and unfriendly ghosts, gets involved in the deadly Vampire Politics, and enters the Grey a few times and non of those times turn out to be a great experience for her.

Every character in the book I felt like developed a close friendship or became mortal enemies with the protagonist over a short period of time. Harper takes on some cases as any normal PI would do thinking them to be compatible with her mundane life and the cases take some surprising paranormal twists.

I personally liked the character of Cameron Shadley, a college kid with an overprotective mother a reluctantly rebellious older sister, and yeah he’s a newly made vampire abandoned by his maker, no idea how to survive in this new paranormal world of the Grey. Her other client turns out to be a revenant of an ancient wizard who wants her to recover a family heirloom which turns out to be a focus of terrible necromantic power. There are other characters like William Novak the love interest who didn’t fortunately for me take the bulk of the story romancing our protagonist which seems to be a recurring theme in these kinds of urban fantasy books, the plot was more focused on the paranormal world, it’s workings, and mostly on the vampires whose explanation is nearly as convoluted as the idea of the grey. The fix-it-all guy and electronic wiz Quinton seems to know more than he lets on and may turn out to be something supernatural himself. The book promises to be a hardcore PI urban noir with a female protagonist in a world full of supernatural and it delivers the same with just little snippets of mundane. The thing I most appreciated about this book is that the cases of the character seem to hold more weight than her love life because the opposite seems to be true for most urban fantasy novels with a female lead and in my opinion it just spoils the story when the romance becomes a thing that encompasses every aspect of the story. There were some things that I have complains about like the technology that Harper has access to seems to be frozen in the ’90s but overall I really appreciated the mood of the story and once I got through the first 100 pages I really enjoyed it because the story does take a little time to get into a rhythm. So, I am definitely gonna be continuing this series, I kinda am interested to know where the story goes.

CHARACTERS:

1. HARPER BLAINE.(GREYWALKER)

Melanie Scrofano.